The Adjustments
by Anifan1
Summary: What could be more difficult than sharing your brain with a Yeerk? Sharing a college dorm room with anyone. UPDATED! Onto chapter 4! Please read and review.
1. Chapter 1

**The Encounter**

Disclaimer: I don't own Animorphs. They're owned by KAA and Scholastic.

I do, however, own Tarash 514. Emily is a version of myself, and Amy and Susan are based on real people who are used with their expressed permission. Please don't sue.

Other stuff:

This story is consistent with Animorphs canon, although it may or may not use Animorphs characters. Everything that happened in the books has occurred in this story, but what is left unsaid is left to the writer's (in this case, my) interpretation. We should assume that the events in this story take place one year after the end of the war. The Animorphs, as you may remember, have aged three years in the last book. Therefore, any Animorphs who survive would be twenty years old at the beginning of this story.

This story takes place before "What is Sleep?" but the events in that story coincide with the ones in this story.

My name is Emily. I am twenty years old. I have just completed my first year of college. I am one of the many Controllers who are keeping a relatively low profile on earth.

I became a Controller two and a half years ago. I heard about the Yeerks because I had joined the Sharing. It seemed like a good way to get community service credit for colleges.

Most of the Yeerks who control humans aren't sadistic. Most are not Visser three in attitude, but lesser in rank. Like humans, there are some good Yeerks and some bad ones. Most of the Yeerks are in the middle.

I was lucky to receive one of the good Yeerks. Almost too lucky, because even though someone had to host the founder of the Peace Movement, I never would have expected it to be me.

Tarash 514 was not my first Yeerk. That had been Nissim 329. Nissim had been relatively nice, and quite understanding. She didn't go through my private thoughts on a regular basis, and recognized how scary it was for me to suddenly lose control over my body. She never tortured me, but she never really talked to me, either.

Tarash was different. There are rumors that this Yeerk is cruel and ruthless, but she's only that way towards other Yeerks. Towards hosts like me, she couldn't be kinder. She would often try and set involuntary hosts free by stunning the host, but making it appear as though the Dracon beam was on a much higher setting than it was. I don't know where she kept these freed hosts, but I expect that they were infested with nicer Yeerks and moved to another division.

Yeerks aren't the best at recognizing similar host bodies.

Tarash was like a combination of an older sister and a mom. Like Nissim, she would have died rather than torture me. She paid attention to my thoughts, but didn't go digging around in my memory unless I was truly upset about something. She had a good sense of humor and was someone who I could confide in and would have been friends with had she been another person.

Even so, living with another creature inside of you can be hard even under the best of circumstances. We were two very different beings and we were trying to live two different lives while putting on the appearance that we were living a completely separate life than that which we were living.

If that sounds confusing, that's because it is.

After the war was over, Tarash stayed inside of me, and we found spare Kandronas for her to use for feeding. Ideally, the Yeerk pool gave all the nutrients that a Yeerk body needed, but the Kandrona was the bare bones survival. After the war ended, we were lucky to get our hands on several portable Kandronas, what with all of the hysteria going on.

You would think that Yeerks were evil incarnate. Just because the Animorphs won the war, suddenly everyone thought that the only good Yeerk was either dead or trapped as a nothlit. There were a relatively large number of us who wanted to stay with our Yeerks, and although the government did not condemn this course of action, society did.

That makes it even harder to Tarash and I to make it seem as though we're living a normal life.

My parents, my sister, my freshman year RA, and my freshman year roommate know the truth about me. No one else does. I hope to keep it a secret until the Host Yeerk Alliance manages to secure rights from the government, such as laws punishing hate crimes against the symbiots. This was what those who chose to remain with their Yeerk called themselves.

After living with an alien in my head for a year and a half, you would think that living with a roommate at college would prove to be easy. After all, if you can share your brain with someone, surely you can share one small room with another person who doesn't even know what you're thinking at any given moment.

Having Tarash inside of me probably made it easier for me to adapt to college life than someone who had never known the Yeerks. In addition, I had a great roommate freshman year, so this was an added bonus. But there is a huge difference between sharing a mind with someone and sharing a messy room with someone.

Especially when these two people operate on two entirely different schedules, one of who does not believe in what most normal people like to call "sleep."


	2. Chapter 2

I found out in early August that my roommate was going to be some girl named Amy Rosenberg and that I would be living in the all girls' dorm, which had been my first choice.

There were two other freshmen dorms. One had air conditioning and small rooms. The other had no air conditioning and tiny rooms.

There were actually people who chose the dorm with tiny rooms and no air conditioning as their first choice.

The information on my roommate paper gave me Amy's name and address. I checked the address on and discovered that she lived a couple of hours away.

I decided to be the one to initiate contact. Partly because I was interested in finding out what my roommate would be like and who would need to bring what. Also partly because Tarash would not stop pestering me to call her. She was as excited as I was.

_We should get a triple,_ I remarked. _There are going to be three of us living together._

Tarash laughed.

I shooed my parents out of the room after dinner two weeks before classes would begin and dialed the number.

After the third ring, someone picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

As usual, I became nervous. "Hi, this is Emily. Is Amy there? I'll be her roommate this year."

"Amy! Telephone!" screamed the speaker.

As I waited, Tarash reassured me that everything would be fine.

_Just don't forget to stand up for yourself. Don't let your roommate push you around. Half of the room _is_ yours, after all._

_You know that's easier said than done._

_I'll be there to help you,_ Tarash promised.

"Hello?" Amy had gotten on the line.

"Hi, my name is Emily. I'm going to be your roommate next year. I mean, this year."

"Oh, yeah, hey! Could you hold on a second…? My family's making a lot of noise."

After a few seconds, there was no more noise in the background.

"Sorry about that," Amy apologized. "So, you're Emily."

"Yes," I replied, for lack of nothing better to say.

_Ask her what her major is,_ Tarash prodded.

"Um, what's your major?"

"I'm not sure. I think maybe English? What about you?"

"English, and I might do elementary education. I'm signed up for the first Education class already," I replied.

"Yeah, I teach Hebrew school. It can be fun, but also a little crazy."

We were treading on dangerous ground here.

I nodded, which was pointless because Amy could not see me, and then replied, "Oh." At Tarash's nagging, I asked, "Are you going to get involved in hillel?"

Hillel was the Jewish group on campus. I would be joining the Newman Center because I was Catholic. Because I was raised Jewish, my mom wanted me to consider myself interfaith and do lots of interfaith dialogue.

The first one would be telling my roommate about my unusual religion situation. I had experience in telling other people, but, with the exception of telling my parents, there was a lot more at stake here.

"Yes, I definitely plan to go to hillel meetings. What about you?"

"No, I don't think so." I wanted to add in, "I guess I won't be seeing you at the Newman Center" but figured that there was a time and a place for that conversation, and on the phone was probably not the best place for it.

I had no idea how I'd tell Amy, but I knew that I would need to do it sometime in the future and in a way that wouldn't make her run away, screaming.

"Oh."

"Do you want to bring a refrigerator or should I?" I questioned. "The other person could do the microwave."

"I'll do the fridge," Amy volunteered. "So you can do the microwave."

"Okay."

"Are you going to bring a TV?"

"My mom won't let me. What about you?"

"My parents won't let me bring one up. I guess we'll have to make do without one," Amy sighed.

Parents.

"Do the doors have mirrors?" I wondered, partly to myself and partly out loud. "One of us should bring one of those."

"They probably have mirrors but no full length mirror," Amy considered. "That can be kind of useful to have."

"Okay, since you're bring the refrigerator, which is heavier than the microwave, I'll bring the full length mirror. We can probably find one at one of those stores that sells college stuff."

"That works. Are you going to bring any furniture?"

"I have a red chair that folds up. My mom and I got it at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. What about you?"

"I have a purple chair that folds," Amy replied. "We can put them in the room once we see what everything looks like."

"I think we've covered the part about who brings what."

"Yeah, now we have to ask each other the tough questions."

"Mind if I go first?"

"Go ahead."

"Are you neat or messy?"

"I'm a complete and total slob. You?"

"I'm messy, but I'm working at trying to be neater."

"Do you listen to loud music while you study?"

"No, then I can't concentrate."

"Same here."

"Do you go to bed early?"

Amy laughed. "I'm lucky if I get five hours of sleep. I'm addicted to caffeine and pull all nighters on a regular basis. But I'll try not to keep you up."

"I go to bed early, so could we have, say, no visitors after midnight or so?"

"That works. If I'm feeling social, I'll go to their rooms or the lounge or something. We have the lounge and the computer lab on our floor…did you know?"

"No, really?"

"Yeah. I checked at the website. We're in the basement, which is really the ground floor. There's a laundry room on our floor and a lounge with a computer lab on the other side of our hall."

"That's nice. Good place to do work and meet with people," I remarked.

"What about boys?"

"I don't have a boyfriend. I've never dated. I'd be uncomfortable with a boy spending the night, to be totally honest."

"I have a boyfriend, but he doesn't go to this college. Even if he did, he wouldn't spend the night. I might want to have guy friends over on occasion, but nothing like _that._"

"It's good that we're on the same page with that," I laughed. "I was getting a little worried there."

"Same here." Pause. "Listen, I have to go…maybe we can talk online?"

"Sure."

We exchanged screen names and email addresses and then hung up. I felt a lot more relaxed than I had before the phone call.

_The worst thing about her is that she's a slob. And I'm not exactly a neat freak myself._

_It does sound good, and she sounds nice. But wait until you meet her,_ Tarash warned. _People can be a lot different than how they seem._

It turned out that she was right on many accounts.


	3. Chapter 3

Amy and I talked a little through AIM during the next couple of weeks, but mostly there was no major communication. I suspected that we were both pretty nervous about rooming together for the next year, but, then again, who wouldn't be?

When the time came for me to actually pack up my things and move to college, I had a lot of help from my mom. At first, we couldn't even get everything to fit into the car, so we left some yaffa block bins at home.

I was a nervous wreck. It was the first time I had ever been away from home for a long period of time. In seventh grade, my teachers had us spend the first full week away from home at this ridiculous nature camp. Four nights, five days. I cried every single day, except the Friday that we returned.

This would be way more than four nights.

I wasn't sure if I could handle it. Over the year, I had imagined what college would be like. I had assumed that because I'd be so eager to escape from my loving, yet crazy, family, I would not feel any homesickness. I would live in a great dorm room and have an amazing roommate. I would be able to take naps during the day. I would not have class from 8 in the morning until 3:10 in the afternoon. I would be away from my loving, yet nagging, parents.

Life would be good.

The reality was that I was scared out of my mind and really did not want to make this transition. I was not ready for classes to start, I was not ready to leave home, and I definitely wasn't ready to have to face having a roommate after having my own room for most of my life.

On the ride there, Tarash talked to me. She took control so I wouldn't keep looking at my watch or something like that. Her voice was calm. Her presence was something that I had gotten used to during the past five years. She knew me incredibly well…so well that she knew when to just talk, and when not to say anything.

Now was a talking time.

I don't remember a lot about the ride there. I do remember that we left early in the morning. Hopefully, I would not be waking up this early for classes.

_You won't,_ Tarash's voice came. _Your Tuesday and Thursday classes are at 11. Your Monday and Wednesday ones are at nine. And Friday is just one class, which is at 10:30._

_How do you remember all of this?_ I asked, amazed.

_I'm excited, too,_ Tarash reminded me. _Don't forget, we're in this together. Granted, that doesn't mean I can help you cheat on your tests or papers, but it does mean that I'm there whenever you need me. Well, except when I feed._

I groaned. _We packed the Kandronas, right?_

_We triple checked. They're there,_ the Yeerk reassured.

_I hope Amy's not in the room all of the time. I'd like to wait a little before springing the news on her._

_It just looks like a lamp. You plug it in and you put me in some water so that I'm facing the lamp. We've done this for over two years by now. You know what to do._

_I know, but what if she finds out?_

_We're going to probably tell her eventually. If the subject comes up. In the meantime, we'll just need to try and plan it when she's not there. Maybe during a gap in her classes or something. We'll figure something out._

I gave a mental sigh. _I'm not ready for this._

_I know you're not. But I'm pretty sure you'll be fine. Let's not think about the worst case scenarios just yet. We'll concentrate on surviving each day._

_At least Amy doesn't seem too bad._

_She seems nice. But people can be different when you actually meet them._

My dad pulled the car in the driveway of the dorm. We got out of the car. A bunch of people wearing identical t-shirts showed us where to go, and told us that they would make sure all of my stuff was delivered to my room.

They pointed us in the direction to go for my dorm key. We had received my identification in the mail a few days ago.

The people at the desk were pretty nice. The line wasn't too bad, either. Within ten minutes, I had received my key and was standing outside of my room.

The place that I would be living in for the next thirty-two weeks.


	4. Chapter 4

I used my key to open the door. I was never very good with keys, but this time, I managed to get the door to unlock.

We had been the first ones to arrive. The room was empty, completely void of any items that Amy would have brought to college with her.

I had seen a few rooms in the all girls' dorm before, but that had been ages ago. I knew that the girls' dorms were larger than the coed dorms. I also knew that we had no air conditioning. It didn't click until that second what no air conditioning meant. The room was extremely hot.

I turned to my parents. "We need to open the windows."

"I was just thinking that, myself," my dad replied.

The windows were located at the front of the room. Later, I would learn that some rooms were corner rooms and had four windows. We did not have a corner room, so we only had two windows. Two that were very high up and didn't seem to let in a whole lot of light.

_That's not necessarily a bad thing,_ Tarash told me. _You won't need to worry about people looking in when you're changing. Half of the room is underground._

She was right. Even though the basement was also known as the ground floor, the windows were about where the ground began. I guessed that this meant that half of our bodies would be beneath the ground when we were in this room.

My mom turned towards my dad. "Where's Emily's stuff?"

"The students doing the moving in took it."

A few seconds later, I heard some voices coming around the hallway.

"Maybe that's them," my dad guessed.

I took a good, hard look at the room. The beds were high off the ground. I'd either need to climb up on a chair or at the end to get on it, or learn how to jump. It wasn't so high that I would need a ladder, but it could be dangerous if I fell.

_That's good, though. Look at all of the space under the bed. You can use it for storage. Books, laundry, that kind of thing._

I peered under one of the beds. Tarash was right; it would be good for putting lots of stuff under.

Behind the bed, facing the main wall, was a large desk. Behind that was something that I assumed could be a closet. I opened it up, rather cautiously. A small dresser was inside.

"Do you think this can come out?" I asked my parents, pointing to the drawers.

"I think so, but let's wait until Amy gets here before we do anything," my dad replied.

I had been looking at the right side of the room. The left side was identical, except for the fact that the dresser was under the bed. The room was certainly small. Maybe a little larger than my room at home, but I didn't need to share that with anyone. Maybe it was just the way things were arranged, but I didn't think that Amy and I were going to have much space.

We were just standing there when Amy walked in with her parents. Later, Amy would tell me that she knocked three times but no one answered the door. I seriously didn't hear a thing. Perhaps it was proof that I was so out of it, but Amy also could have been a light knocker.

We faced each other.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Amy was smaller than I was, which said something, since I am extremely tiny. Her hair was a little below her shoulders. Wavy, but not super curly the way mine had been. Like me, she made the mistake of wearing it loose today.

"So, this is our room," I said, for lack of anything better to say.

"Yeah. It's not so bad."

"What side do you want?"

"Oh, I don't care. Do you want to leave everything the way it is, or move the stuff around?"

"Let's move it around. Then, we can decide who gets what," I replied.

Amy's parents insisted on helping us, but that turned out to be difficult because none of us had a very good idea as to where we wanted everything to go. We finally decided that most of the furniture should be against the walls so that there would be more space in the center of the room. After some experimentation, one bed went against the side of the room near the door and the second bed went perpendicular to it against another wall. The closets went next to the windows in the small amount of space that was left over. Amy put one of the desks next to one bed. I put the other desk along the last free wall.

Once we were finished, the room looked a little odd, but felt much larger.

"I'll take the bed across the non door wall," Amy offered.

"That's fine."

A few people stopped by our room to drop off some of our stuff. Most of it went under my bed as we decided what to do with everything.

Setting up wasn't too bad. Amy's parents and mine got along pretty well, but were interested in setting up the room more than talking. This was surprising for me, since my mom is usually a chatterbox around people.

Two hours later, the room looked as though two people lived in it. I still had to find some posters and figure out how to decorate my side of the room, but it didn't look too bad.

I cried as I said goodbye to my parents. I wasn't ready to leave. I could live in this room for a night, maybe, but not a full year. I wasn't ready for classes to begin.

But we had a schedule to follow, and that schedule said that advising groups needed to meet at a selected spot at 1:30.

As my parents left, I told myself, _At least I have Tarash. Even if things go horribly, at least I have my best friend._


End file.
